WINNERS
Apologies in advance for this subsection. Pickings were extremely slim. To wit:
SUPER SMASH
The Clubrooms: Dylan Cleaver - Australian cricket abuse sadly predictable
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Indian players look to towards a section of crowd where alleged abuse was directed at Mohammed Siraj. Photo / Getty
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The name is still bad, like it was decided by a Year Two class competition. It still looks and feels a little homespun, but the crowd at Hagley Oval under lights for the first time shows what can happen if you have your best players available and play at decent venues.
It's always going to look a little village-crickety when placed alongside the bright lights of the Big Bash, but that's OK.
Hopefully, when general normality resumes in the outside world, six world-class imports could really liven things up.
TOM BRADY
He's 43 and has just won an NFL playoff game with a performance reminiscent of some of his more clinical performances as a New England Patriot.
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When he left Boston for Tampa Bay there was a school of thought who believed that without the guiding hand of coach Bill Belichick, Brady's athletic shortcomings would be brutally exposed.
Instead, after playing a big part in turning the perennial loser Buccaneers into a playoff team, the question might be whether Belichick will ever be the same coach without Brady to call his plays on the field?
CRAWLEY & CHORLEY
The FA Cup is greatly diminished from the ultimate knockout tournament it used to be, but it can still give rise to the odd fairytale. So it was when non-league teams Crawley and Chorley beat the Premier League's Leeds United and Championship side Derby County.
It does come with a giant BUT though.
While the Crawley result really was astonishing, we somehow had a situation where sixth-tier side Chorley were favourites against Derby, whose entire first-team squad was unavailable, as was most of their under-19 squad.
Which brings us to the first of the losers…
LOSERS
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COVID SPORT
The return of professional sport in the year of the pandemic was always going to be hell of a trick to pull off. For the most part it's been a positive in a dire time.
The success or failure of such returns was always likely to depend on the success or failure of each country's health infrastructure and pandemic crisis plan.
So we're seeing farcical situations in English football and a distorted NBA when results are dependent as much on who has cleared protocols to play as they are about skills and tactics. We've even seen the NBA have to postpone matches.
When both those countries are in as dire states as they have been since the start of the outbreak, it almost feels like professional sport is a crass distraction rather than a healing balm.
It also makes you question how they can contemplate an Olympic Games any time soon.
SHANE WARNE/ ANDREW SYMONDS
One of the foundation stones of broadcasting is you never say anything when the mic is not live than you would if it was. You just never know. But it's not even the fact that they broke a basic tenet of professionalism by chatting "off air" about Marnus Labuschagne, it's also what they said, mocking Attention Deficit Disorder like kids in a playground.
SCG CROWD
And the above leads to places like here. The engagement between the crowd and the action is central to the enduring appeal sport. At its best it can be energising and occasionally hilarious. At its worst it can be British football pre-Heysel.
The bond is fragile.
Don't for a minute think New Zealand crowds are incapable of the sort of crap we've read about from Sydney but the disappointing thing about the abuse sent Mohammad Siraj's way was the predictability of it.
Players have to take some responsibility too. If crowds grow up seeing players abuse each other on the pitch, why wouldn't they feel it is open slather from the cheap seats?
(The key word there is abuse, not to be confused with banter.)
"Anyone who knows me knows it's one of my greatest pet hates in life that people think they can come to any sporting event and think they can abuse or say whatever they like. I hated it as a player and I hate it as a coach," said Justin Langer.
It's a noble sentiment, but slightly diminished when you consider the way the Australian teams he was part of behaved on the field.
The sports week has been massively overshadowed by the American politics week. If only there was a way to combine them…
TOMMY LASORDA
Lasorda, who died last week aged 93, was the popular Los Angeles Dodgers manager who looked and often acted like the archetypal baseball man. But while his presence seemed eternal, his legacy is complicated by one significant issue.
Pretty simple. Prada Cup. Foiled again, from Friday, TVNZ.
